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Defense to me is the key to playing baseball.

Willie Mays

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Willie Mays
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: May 6
Baseball Player
Jefferson County
Alabama
Willie Howard Mays Jr.
Willie Howard Mays
The Say Hey Kid
Motivational
Playing
Sports
Defense
Keys
Baseball

More quotes by Willie Mays

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I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game
Willie Mays
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If you can do that - if you run, hit, run the bases, hit with power, field, throw and do all other things that are part of the game - then you're a good ballplayer.
Willie Mays
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The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have.
Willie Mays
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When I got to professional ball I used to play 150 games every year. It depends on how many games there was.
Willie Mays
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I think I was programmed to do good things when I came into the majors. I knew how to play.
Willie Mays
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When I was in Birmingham I used to go to a place called Redwood Field. I used to get there for a two o'clock game. Where can you make this kind of money playing sports? It was just a pleasure to go out and enjoy myself and get paid for it.
Willie Mays
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I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act
Willie Mays
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I played with the Birmingham Black Barons. I was making 500 at 14. That was a lot of money in those days.
Willie Mays
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That's how easy baseball was for me. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I had the knowledge before I became a professional baseball player to do all these things and know what each guy would hit.
Willie Mays
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I would try and help everybody, because the game was so easy for me. It was just like walking in the park.
Willie Mays
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It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What is tough, is being good every day.
Willie Mays
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Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what is most truly is is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
Willie Mays
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I'm not the type of guy to go out and just say, 'Hey, I'm raising my fist to do this and do that.' I don't think I'm that type of guy. I wasn't a leader the way other people may have wanted me to be.
Willie Mays
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I don't rate them, I just hit them.
Willie Mays
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The catch off Bobby Morgan (a backhanded grab of the Brooklyn Dodger's line drive in September 1951 at Ebbets Field) in Brooklyn was the best catch I ever made. Jackie Robinson and (Giants manager) Leo Durocher were the first people I saw when I opened my eyes
Willie Mays
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Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.
Willie Mays
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I remember the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone. You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball, and I knew I had to leave it.
Willie Mays
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What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.
Willie Mays
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When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody. But, when I'm hitting, I hit anybody.
Willie Mays
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I was a baseball player, I taught baseball, and all of a sudden I was in the business world. Now I used the baseball world to talk about their product. Not too much, just enough to keep going. Just be yourself and you'll never have a problem. That's what I did.
Willie Mays